Those cars on the mainland roads. Grrrrrrr.

[Pauline Darkfury]

Here's a classic example of the problem.  Some yob/idiot with too much money gets drunk and drives his absurdly oversized roadster down the railway until it breaks down because cars just don't work right on rail tracks.  Then would you believe it, he gets rear ended by a drunk cabbie who's done the same thing!

[Millennium Sands]

I can't help it, but some folks here simply sound ridiculous to me...

Pedestrians who got hit multiple times by these cars? How blind can you be??? Ok, I was hit one time myself, and readers of the Alphaville Herald might remember the report on this oh so terrible, painful, and shocking experience. But getting hit more than once could almost be called an artistic achievement. :smileyvery-happy:

If you're really that shortsighted, here's good news for you: There's a draw distance BEYOND 4 meters!

Oh, and those drivers who find it next to impossible to drive a car and survive this new "heavy traffic"? Anybody with driving skills like THAT might be even more dangerous to pedestrians than those botcars! Maybe I'm prejudiced, since I'm a race driver in SL and used to more than meeting one other car on a road every 10 minutes, but I'd really appriciate it if those drivers would send me a warning when they hit the roads, so I can run for shelter somewhere. :smileyvery-happy:

What really makes me wonder is this question: How do these people survive 1st Life??? 

[Govindira Galatea]

---

Millennium Sands wrote:

I can't help it, but some folks here simply sound ridiculous to me...

Pedestrians who got hit multiple times by these cars? How blind can you be??? Ok, I was hit one time myself, and readers of the Alphaville Herald might remember the report on this oh so terrible, painful, and shocking experience. But getting hit more than once could almost be called an artistic achievement. :smileyvery-happy:

If you're really that shortsighted, here's good news for you: There's a draw distance BEYOND 4 meters!

Oh, and those drivers who find it next to impossible to drive a car and survive this new "heavy traffic"? Anybody with driving skills like THAT might be even more dangerous to pedestrians than those botcars! Maybe I'm prejudiced, since I'm a race driver in SL and used to more than meeting one other car on a road every 10 minutes, but I'd really appriciate it if those drivers would send me a warning when they hit the roads, so I can run for shelter somewhere. :smileyvery-happy:

What really makes me wonder is this question: How do these people survive 1st Life??? 

---

So... What's your point?

[Blot Brickworks]

Just found out I live east coast mainland.That is why I have never seen or heard anything about these things.We don,t have any roads .too hilly.

I must get out and see for myself,one of these days.

[Jondolarr Larsson]

They ask if you want to purchase the script that allows it to run on the roads that you mentioned. (That script cost's L100 I believe ). I think they are fun and the  person that makes them has the outlook that they are improving everyones SL Experiance . However i do see piles of them all over the mainland contenents and I've always wondered how the owners feel about them maxing thier prim counts for  them. They will push ,but they always say "Sorry" . The tank one is a bit scary as it is scripted to  shoot temporary prim bullets at whoever touches the tank prim.

 

I have actually ridden on them and bought a couplle out of curiousity. They don't go "where you want" like some SL Vehicles will because the script tracks on the  road prims . They will turn around if touched on the rear decklid. I have travled for over an hour with not much problem except whemn crossing multiple simlines on the  diagonal trajectory . That is also where you will see a few piled in a heap on someones land or "Abandoned Land Parcels". On those parcels , nobody clears the  prims  so they get a lot of junk prims  wasting resources. I think that is one of the biggest drawbacks to  these  "Road Tracking Vehicles" :smileyhappy:

[Jondolarr Larsson]

LMAO

 those are both cars that we are talking about. She has about 6 differant models of cars 3 trucks a tank and a  bus or 2. They work just like the train you mentioned . They are scripted to follow  a prim track/road. I have a  Train I got free  when I was exploring the track system on the mainland a while back. The only real differance is that the cars can be purchased and the train is free .

 You can drive the train on the roads  or tracks also. BEEP BEEP!:smileyvery-happy:

[Ann Otoole]

 

---

Polenth Yue wrote:

AnnMarie Otoole wrote:

*  Despite accusations, they doe NOT spam the public.  They do offer free cars to PASSENGERS and allow tipping the driver.

*  They do NOT spam menus unless you are a passenger

Yes they do. Not every time, but I've had a number of popups from them. I did not click them, ride them or anything else. All I was doing is standing near them.

If you read through the messages here, you'll see a number of us aren't saying we love them or we hate them. We're saying it was fine, but they're getting out of control. I know I'd rather work with you than put in an AR. But it doesn't come across as though you want to work with anyone to fix the problems. Just cutting the numbers in half and looking into why they message bystanders would be a good start.

---

So if hundreds of people all began running road tracker tip jars cluttering up and ruining the regions then LL might take action to forbid it.

 

 

Other than that I expect LL to ignore it. Politics is politics.

[Tegg Bode]

They are a nice idea but when they obviously irritate other residents it's just not on.

If someone wants a sim like this let them buy a whole sim or 4 and fill it with as many vehicles as they like.

[Mog Munster]

At least you guys have cars on the road.  It makes sense :smileyindifferent:

There is a car in the sky where I live that has been there for few years...lol

[Baloo Uriza]

 

---

Mog Munster wrote:

At least you guys have cars on the road.  It makes sense :smileyindifferent:

There is a car in the sky where I live that has been there for few years.

---

Have you tried contacting the owner of that car where it is so they can retreive it?

 

[DrFran Babcock]

Well, there seem to be less of them of late, but they are still there. I found a taxi trying to climb the hill next to Lakeville (on Drawbridge) for some time without success. It must have made it finally, as it is not there. I ARed it.

My sim is an old-time south of France canal in the Languedoc. Taxis and ice cream trucks can stay on the road, but really! This Sunday, the great RacerX Gullwing will sponsor a Relay for Life Giant Snail Race on Sansara. Last time, on the Atoll Continent, there were many snail/vehicle collisions. I do NOT want to be cleaning up slime this week. :smileywink:

[Pussycat Catnap]

 

---

DrFran Babcock wrote:

Surely, there are other people in SL who would appreciate seeing them banned. Allow only vehicles with residents driving them. I wonder how this was allowed to happen? Thanks for reading.

---

 

Given how lonely and empty so much of mainland is, I consider these cars a major feature for keeping some breath of activity to the place.

I very much applaud whoever made them for doing so and for releasing them onto the roads. You can have a fun afternoon sometimes just hopping onto one and seeing where it will take you. I've found quite a few new places that way.

 

[Hintswen Guardian]

I love the cars! I have talked to the creator, I hop in and travel around randomly if I see one. Unfortunately I haven't seen one for awhile

BTW If you find one that has lost it's way, let the creator know so they can take it back.

[Govindira Galatea]

---

Hintswen Guardian wrote:

I love the cars! I have talked to the creator, I hop in and travel around randomly if I see one. Unfortunately I haven't seen one for awhile

BTW If you find one that has lost it's way, let the creator know so they can take it back

---

Please don't drink and drive...or post.:smileywink:

[ArgontheDevil Ormega]

I like them too.  I can hop on one and, assuming it does not fly into the air when it hits a region line or collides with another car, ride in it from one property I own to easy walking distance of another.  And never quite knowing when you are going to fly off into space does add a bit of random excitement to the trip.

[Prokofy Neva]

Look, this is a pretty simple principle here and I don't understand why some of you are having such a hard time getting it -- or aggressively posting contrarian messages.

NO ONE RESIDENT OF SECOND LIFE SHOULD GET TO HOG THE PUBLIC RESOURCES OF LINDEN LAND INTENDED FOR THE USE OF ALL RESIDENTS OF SECOND LIFE.

It's a pretty basic principle. Yes, there are other violations like "selling on Linden Land," long an official Linden policy, although apparently not spelled out in the TOS. You can't solicit or sell in sandboxes or at infohubs or welcome areas, there are signs up forbidding this, they are prosecuted and we can see cases on the police blotter  -- why would you get to do this on Linden *roads* just because you scripted a self-navigating sim-crossing device???

This notion that they are "fun" and "a ride" and "you're a meany if you don't get it" is contradicted by the obvious: there are way, way too many of them (I count dozens of them an hour crossing areas where I own land) and they are inappropriate in a number of ways -- cars running on railroad tracks, buses running on open Linden seas, etc.

The Lindens should put out scripted vehicles like this to maintain quality and appropriate themed content --they used to do this on the SLRR with trains (the late and great Nigel Linden who is sadly missed, he died in real life).

I realize there are challenges and the Lindens may not want to put out a product until it is "their best" but we are being overwhelmed by these idiotic things, they fly in the air, they crash into people, they pile up on land -- they have to go!

What's most annoying is the sense that the Lindens are allowing this, despite numerous abuse reports for cause, because it's a free load test for them. There's also the issue that the Lindens never met a script they didn't like. Even the most destructive scripts, they tend to deal with not by deprecation but by saying "well, you can't sell that on the marketplace but..."

 

[Prokofy Neva]

No, no, there are not less but way, way more. I used to see them only occasionally in about a dozen sims where I have rentals. Now I see them constantly, a huge stream, and more aggressively, i.e. buses on water, cars on rail tracks, etc.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Those parts of linden land where they're not supposed to be have object entry turned off.

For the rest of Linden Land, its for shared public use - for use by all residents. Kinda socialist that way - sharing that is, the Christian thing to do - but there you have it. If they want these cars stopped a simple toggle in land settings on the roads will smack them out of existence.

If they have gotten more exessive than they used to be, then AR that aspect of them. Just make specific logs of when and where a bunch have been seen, snapshot it, AR it, and send a notecard off to some Linden you know with the snapshots and a reference to you having filed the AR at 'X' time.

Because while we all should share the public goods of SL, excess is still excess when and where it exists.

 

If the maker of them needs some roadside spots ot rez them still, I might consider hosting the rezzing device on my A lot - since I've yet to see those cars on A land.

 

[Yevad Doobie]

If you see many together, it is probably due to this bug: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-6059

 

...and it seems to be getting worse.

[Randall Ahren]

The cars seem to have disappeared on the atoll, at least for today. 

[Qie Niangao]

They've been off the SLRR for at least a couple of days -- since whenever the last rolling restarts were happening, because I remember staring at the blank traffic map and wondering if they were just waiting for the sims to settle down again.  Apparently not.

[Marianne McCann]

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

They've been off the SLRR for at least a couple of days -- since whenever the last rolling restarts were happening, because I remember staring at the blank traffic map and wondering if they were just waiting for the sims to settle down again.  Apparently not.

---

How pleasantly curious.

 

 

[Randall Ahren]

I asked in NCI group chat if anyone else had noted the absence of the cars. Someone jokingly replied that the cars had been raptured.

It reminds me of the story by Robert Sheckley concerning Armageddon. It is the last battle between humans and the forces of Satan. Military leaders decide that robot armies are the best option, ignoring the advice of religious leaders who claim that this is a battle that humans must fight. Good prevails over evil, but the robots ascend to heaven and leave the humans behind. 

ps: Maybe mainland without the cars is heaven, so perhaps the avatars were raptured.

[Qie Niangao]

To be honest, though, I kind of miss them.  Well, maybe not quite as many as there were at one time, and maybe not exactly how they behaved in their current state of development, and... well, they raise difficult questions that were explored in gory and repetitive detail earlier in this thread.  But the Mainland does seem a little less interesting without some activity on the roads and rails.

I actually felt the same way about the Duotrams -- especially after several times seeing newish residents ride them up the North Coast branch and hop off to visit a neighbor's store.

(Oh, I should make abundantly clear: I'm not speaking for VRC or any other group; these are just my personal opinions, and not very fully formed opinions at that.)

Speaking of "not fully formed":  In another, Off-Topic thread, I mumbled about a possible next-generation "camping" that would pay newbies to ride tours around the Mainland, accompanied by object-IM'd historical narrative about the sites they pass, and occasional "words from the sponsors" -- stores, venues, rental locations, etc. along the path that subsidize the "camping" payouts.

There'd certainly be challenges to such a system:

1. I have no idea of the state of the art in detecting and booting camperbots. 
2. Presumably, the advertisers (if any) would be heavily skewed toward cheap newbie-tourist traps; one wouldn't want it to degrade to the point the system was promoting outright scams.
3. After fighting so hard to get rid of adfarms, the last thing I'd want to promote is roving billboards, so all advertising would have to be completely unobtrusive. 
4. Dragging avatars through sims would have a lot more performance impact than empty vehicles, so it had better have benefit outweighing that effect.

On the plus side:

1. It would give newbies something to do that's a lot more engaging than static camping. 
2. And "engaging" not only individually, but socially: passing scenery is a pretty good icebreaker, in my experience.
3. It would give newbies a way to earn a (very) few L$s. 
4. It would promote in-world commerce (as opposed to Marketplace),
5. ... and promote Mainland commerce specifically -- an endangered species, evidenced by all that abandoned land.
6. It would also, of necessity, educate new residents on the perils of wearing too many scripts -- something I'm sure would benefit Support.  (Some huge percentage of Phoenix support is reported to be spent enabling avatars to TP again by removing their accreted script loads.)

Well, it's an idea, or maybe the beginnings of one.  Not sure whether it's worth anybody pursuing it or not. 

[Randall Ahren]

Your idea is interesting. Make it into something of a quest for new residents. Noobs get one Linden dollar for each station that they stop and check into. If they stop and check in at all the stations, they get a bonus of 10L. Could be fun.